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SpatialNews.com Feature Article
Benefits of GIS Integration with an Enterprise Asset
Management System
by Damon D. Judd, President Ala Carto Consulting, March 20, 2003
[Printer Friendly Version]
"Science is nothing but perception" (Plato)
Organizations with a large physical asset infrastructure are being challenged with the
implementation of information technology to maximize the returns on their infrastructure
investments. Business drivers including new government legislation such as GASB 34,
deregulation of utilities, and increased competition among all business sectors, including
a renewed emphasis on customer service, suggest that new and better information
systems are required. To meet this implementation challenge, an Enterprise Asset
Management (EAM) system is frequently recommended.
An EAM solution includes hardware, software, and data, as well as the information and
knowledge encapsulated in the technology and the people. It needs to incorporate
integrated technology as well as appropriate management practices and principles to
make effective use of the software and related information. A successful EAM
implementation leads to continuous improvement from better performance measurement
of asset operations.
Further substantial business benefits can be achieved through the implementation of a
Geographic Information System (GIS) that is integrated with the EAM solution. By
spatially enabling the representation of the entire infrastructure in map-based views, and
by utilizing tools to analyze spatial relationships, tremendous improvements in efficiency,
cost containment, and better decision-making can be realized.
INTRODUCTION
A typical utility company or public works organization owns and maintains thousands of
assets including vehicles, equipment, and facilities. Difficult to quantify but just as
valuable is the investment in the people and the supporting technology to build, maintain
and operate those assets effectively.
An Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) solution can often provide the necessary
capabilities for meeting at least 80% of the business needs related to all aspects of asset
construction, maintenance/repairs, and operations. It also enables the continuous
improvement process by offering a foundation set of tools for measuring the performance
of those assets based on an established set of metrics.
What is an EAM solution?
An EAM solution uses a suite of software tools to support the tracking, analysis, and
reporting of asset and work-related information across an organization’s divisions or
departments. Some of the business processes that can be improved by implementing an
EAM solution include:
1. Asset management - tracking the asset condition, life cycle cost, and performance
measurements.
2. Work management - including labor performance, material availability, equipment
conditions, work duration, activity details, and repair or maintenance estimates.
3. Materials and Service management - decision support for vendor performance
evaluations, material usage, inventory turns, and service quality.
4. Financial management - includes support for budgeting, cost tracking, cash flow
forecasting, and financial reporting.
An enterprise asset management system must enable the collection and dissemination of a
repository of asset-related information. The information delivered by the EAM solution
should be accessible to a multitude of end users: from field workers to dispatchers,
engineers, supervisors, line managers, and on up to the executive level. It must also be
feasible to view or report the information in a number of different ways to satisfy the
specific needs of each business unit. Different access methods might include graphic,
tabular, and map-based displays.
GIS Integration with Asset Management
By further integrating into the EAM solution the capabilities of a Geographic Information
System (GIS), which many organizations already have in place, the ability to manage the
asset inventory even more efficiently can be realized. The GIS enables map-based views
of the asset and work information that is managed using an EAM system.
Because there is a database relationship between the spatial data in the GIS and details of
the assets and the work performed on those assets in the EAM, extended graphical
display and data analysis functionality becomes possible. In an integrated solution, the
graphical perspective can be presented along with a detailed work history of the selected
set of assets. Asset-related information can be spatially analyzed to help identify trends or
to determine impacts of proposed operations. Analysis results and trends can be displayed
on a map to further assist in the decision making process.
Figure 1. Call Center Application - example of GIS integration with EAM to enhance customer service.
(image courtesy of Azetca, Inc.)
The need for an integrated EAM solution is being driven from the business requirement to
manage the overall asset life cycle cost, while creating a shareable knowledge base about
those assets. It is also being driven by technology challenges such as obsolescence,
complexity, and support of a plethora of disparate IT systems in the face of budget
reductions.
From a business perspective, organizations such as those in the utilities and public works
sectors are being challenged to do more with less. For example, in the electric utility
market de-regulation is forcing companies to ensure that assets are being operated in the
most efficient manner to keep rates down.
GASB 34
Particularly in the public sector, new legislation such as GASB 34 is creating new
incentives to more efficiently maintain existing infrastructure. Adopted in June 1999 by
the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, Statement No. 34 is more commonly
known as GASB 34. Among other provisions, GASB 34 now requires government
agencies to report the value of their infrastructure assets such as roads, bridges, water and
sewer facilities, and similar long-lived assets.
The methods for accounting for the value of assets can be based on depreciation of those
assets, or it can be based on a modified approach. The modified approach requires the
government agency to demonstrate that the infrastructure assets are maintained at or
above a condition level that has been established.
In addition, there are specific asset reporting requirements for GASB 34 that can be
supported by GIS capabilities, especially when integrated with an EAM solution. An
integrated GIS and EAM solution provides the capabilities for supporting asset reporting
requirements by documenting the asset inventory, storing the asset condition levels, and
by assisting in tracking the cost accumulation associated with daily work activities
performed on the infrastructure assets as required by the GASB 34 modified approach.
Figure 2. Road inventory for Boston uses a GIS interface to support asset reporting.
BUSINESS DRIVERS
Fundamentally, three main business drivers exist for infrastructure asset intensive
organizations. They are:
1. Maximize the return on capital invested,
2. Manage the overall asset life cycle cost, and
3. Maintain a shareable asset knowledge base.
Maximize the return on capital invested
Both the private and public sectors need to eliminate premature asset replacement and the
obsolescence of their asset investments. For example, the cost of replacing a new pump in
a pump station is more expensive in the long term than performing the required
preventative maintenance. And by tracking the operational performance of assets,
condition levels can be more effectively monitored, providing a meaningful track record
that enables better decision support prior to making investments in new capital projects.
Manage the overall asset life cycle cost
As companies look to do more with less, they need to evaluate the overall impact of
adding new assets to their systems. To accomplish this, they must understand the full life
cycle cost of an asset. The life cycle costs of an asset can be divided into four stages:
1. Asset planning: the costs associated with planning for the construction and
on-going improvement to the assets;
2. Asset installation/improvement and replacement: the costs associated with
extending the life of an asset including the initial installation;
3. Asset maintenance: the costs associated with maintaining the assets to ensure
it fulfills its anticipated useful life; and
4. Asset operations: the costs associated with operating the asset, which usually
forces asset maintenance.
Maintain shareable asset knowledge base
Factors like the aging work force and the volume of assets being managed are creating
challenges to maintain a reusable asset knowledge base. For example, organizations want
to know the problems associated with assets and equipment: who are the best vendors,
where is the highest incidence of failure, and what are the best work practices? The
answers to these questions must be readily available.
Why implement an EAM solution?
Asset life cycle management is not static. New methods and techniques are constantly
being tried and implemented around the world. The challenge is in making these methods
and techniques available to members of the organization so they can learn and adapt.
BENEFITS TO THE ORGANIZATION - WHY GIS?
With recent and emerging technology advances such as the componentization and
standardization of software, enterprise-wide systems are feasible and even required in
order to manage the volume of information associated with infrastructure assets.
The spatial view of an asset inventory adds new dimensions to supervisors’ abilities,
maintenance and work crews’ efficiency, management curiosity, and a host of other
intangible benefits. To wit, the ability to visually display the asset data that affects an
individual employee’s planned or completed work activities, along with reference
features such as roads, buildings, sidewalks, and so on, can make all the difference
between an efficient organization and a misdirected one.
Enabling the Spatial View
Science, in many forms, is based on abstractions of reality. Take a map for example. A map
is simply an abstract representation of reality, drawn to scale, usually onto a flat surface. It is
intended to allow the reader to comprehend where " things " are in relation to each other.
Maps are typically used to represent some part of the Earth's surface and the "things" may be
places, classes, features, or objects located in some known frame of reference or coordinate
system. Traditional maps represent the information in a planimetric manner, such that
horizontal spatial relationships are accurately portrayed. In other terms, the objects being
mapped are stored as data planes, where a data plane is a collection of similar types of
features with x,y coordinates. The x,y coordinates represent locations where the curved
surface of the Earth has been projected onto a flat (planar) surface described by a two-
dimensional, cartesian (X,Y) coordinate system.
A GIS Database for the Asset Inventory
A Geographic Information System (GIS) database consists of a spatially registered set of
data planes or themes of objects (e.g. assets) that can be mapped. A GIS represents data
graphically and provides additional tools for analyzing spatially referenced data. A GIS
is sometimes called a spatial database management system.
Desktop mapping systems and Computer Aided Drafting (CAD) systems have existed for
many years and are widely used, especially in the fields of civil and mechanical engineering,
architectural design, and facilities management. The primary distinction between these
types of systems and Geographic Information Systems is the ability of a GIS to:
* Integrate data from a variety of source scales and formats into a common,
geographically-referenced coordinate system,
* Maintain connections between spatial objects and tabular attributes, and
* Provide analysis tools to manipulate those data in a spatial context.
An asset inventory is typically at least partially maintained in some sort of database or
computerized system(s). If the locations of those assets have been mapped or located in
some way, the first step toward creating a GIS database of the asset inventory has already
been achieved.
Spatial Analysis
By representing the data appropriately in a GIS and by applying the concepts of spatial
relations we can greatly improve our ability to make good decisions, especially those
decisions that are derived from our understanding of human interaction with the world
around us. The fact that the data planes in a GIS are spatially registered ensures that
objects that are collinear, such as a street segment from one data plane and a county
boundary (defined by the street centerline) from another data plane, lie on the exact same
set of X,Y coordinate pairs.
By applying GIS tools to analyze spatial relationships, it is much faster and easier to answer
questions that face modern infrastructure organizations, like: how many linear feet of old
sewer lines need to be replaced this year that are within busy commercial areas?
Proximity may be used to understand how residential neighborhoods evolve, or where to
place new power lines without adversely impacting local neighborhoods. Connectedness
can be used to describe transportation networks or to model flows along a pipeline.
Superposition involves the 3rd dimension (z, or elevation component) and provides a
means to identify, for example, where a concrete sidewalk overlies a utility conduit.
Containment includes the ability to determine what features or objects are inside other
features, such as the number of proposed light poles to be placed inside a new residential
development.
Once the asset inventory has been spatially enabled in a GIS database, the use of spatial
analysis tools can be applied to help analyze the information and thus enable decision
support.
Figure 3. GIS data layers can be spatially analyzed to support engineering design decisions.
TECHNICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Database Relations - Primary Keys
By combining the advantages of the graphical display of data, the ability to analyze spatial
relationships among the data, and the integration with non-spatial descriptive information
about those assets, some very powerful tools can be applied.
A GIS provides the graphical interface needed to view asset data directly after it is entered
into an EAM system. In order for that to happen, there needs to be a connection between
the location (and corresponding spatial view) of the asset stored in the GIS and all the
maintenance history, condition ratings, and detailed data about those assets that is
maintained in the EAM database.
The connection is typically based on a unique data column called a primary key. A primary
key field is stored both in the GIS as an attribute for a spatial location (such as the Asset_ID)
and is linked to a similar data field that is included in the EAM data tables (e.g.
EQUIPMENT_ID or FACILITY_ID) that contain detailed asset information.
Implementation Issues
The question often asked when an organization is deciding whether or not to implement an
EAM solution is: “Should we go for the Big Bang approach, or split up the effort into
multiple, smaller, yet inter-related projects?” Good question. The answer is likely to be
based on the specific circumstances faced by each organization. How much data must be
converted? How many old systems can/should be replaced? What integration points must be
built? Who are all the people that will need training? Why is there no budget for this? And
so on.
Business Process Change
For organizations to make effective use of the information inherent in an EAM system, a
continuous improvement approach is recommended. In order to enhance an
organization’s work processes, it is likely that changes to the current processes will be
necessary. Continuous improvement can be realized when an organization is able to
define metrics regarding specific asset conditions, then measure those metrics and
analyze the results. But the only way to achieve continuous improvement is through
changes to business processes based on the information derived from the measurement of
asset performance. Therefore an organization that is preparing to implement an EAM
solution must also be prepared for changes to their current practices.
There are various approaches, methodologies, and techniques that can be applied to help
design and implement process change based on asset performance measurements. The
Balanced Scorecard approach is one that is used by a variety of industries from
manufacturing to utilities to measure performance at a number of levels. For work
management, Acitivity-Based Costing (ABC) can be used to help streamline cost and
budget estimates and provide a data model for tracking those costs.
By adding the GIS component to an EAM solution, all members of the organization can
expand their abilities to view assets, schedule work, optimize maintenance operations,
make more cost-effective decisions, and have more fun in the process.
Figure 4. Integrated GIS and event planning application for the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics.
(image courtesy The TSR Group)
Conclusion
By integrating the spatial component, the asset knowledge base that is enabled via the
implementation of an EAM solution can be better managed, shared, and visualized. Maps
with current information become readily available. Spatial analysis capabilities can
further supplement decision support and asset reporting requirements. The same
knowledge base used by upper management can be extended to the field staff through
mobile deployment.
By integrating capabilities such as a spatially enabled, enterprise-wide asset inventory it
is possible to increase the effectiveness in measuring the performance of asset
operations. Resulting changes to the affected business processes will likely lead to
continuous process improvement, thereby reducing maintenance costs, improving
customer service, enhancing operational efficiency, and increasing the return to the
bottom line.
REFERENCES
Damm, Mark, 2001. “Implementing Enterprise Asset Management Solutions”, GITA Annual
Conference proceedings, San Diego, CA, March 2001.
Jensen, Clint and Carl Horton, 2002. “GASB 34 Implementation using GIS”, Azteca Systems, Inc.
White Paper, http://www.azteca.com/gasb34.htm.
Vivek, March 2000. “Utilities Sector Industry Trends Document”, Infosys Technologies, Ltd. white
paper, Bangalore, India.
GITA, 2002. “GIS, WMS Find Common Ground”, Platts Energy Business & Technology, Vol. 4, No.
7, November/December 2002, McGraw Hill Companies, Hightstown, NJ, pp 69-71.
About the Author
Damon D. Judd is President of Ala Carto Consulting, a private consulting practice offering GIS and spatial data management services to utilities, energy, local government, and environmental ogranizations. His education includes a Geography degree from U.C. Santa Barbara with an emphasis in remote sensing and GIS. His career spans more than 22 years in information technology roles including programmer/analyst, technical team lead, project manager, consultant, and technical advisor in a variety of government and industry sectors including research, energy, water resources, forestry, software, and consulting.
Mr. Judd’s areas of specialization include geographic information systems (GIS), relational database management, business process analysis, system integration, facilities and land management, and decision support systems for engineering and environmental applications. Additional areas of expertise include: asset and work management, remote sensing and image processing, computer graphics, computer aided drafting (CAD), and environmental modeling.
He has numerous publications and presentations related to geospatial data analysis techniques, database and application design, and project implementations. Mr. Judd is currently an adjunct faculty member of the University of Denver Geography Department.
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